No Fear Of The Dark
by Swordage
Summary: Phobias are the unreasoning fear of that which should not be frightening. Unless you have good reason to fear it. No Winchester is afraid of the dark  there are worse things than that, by far.


Sam was afraid of fire. He touched it almost every day, salt-and-burn, knew how to turn a car into a crematorium, knew that it took fifteen hundred degrees and three hours to burn a body to ash, that gasoline burns at five hundred fifty degrees tops, that it took less than a minute for his apartment to burn to cinders and forensics was baffled, said it burned like a lightning strike. Sam knew fire. He knew the signs it left, knew how it burned in the rage of a thousand motherless children, knew the taste of _ash to ash and dust to dust_ and how even when you scrubbed really hard it stayed in your pores until it chose to leave. Demons were ash, leftovers of hellfire; his father was ash inside, smoldering coals of vengeance, and he understood that perfectly. He felt that fire too. He wanted ThatThingThatKilledOurMother to burn, twice and thrice again, until the ash had eaten itself into nothing. He wanted it to feel its own branded touch, to fail the trial it had set for Sam (and all the children like him) and sometimes he couldn't feel anything but that hot rage.

He wasn't afraid of burning himself on it. He was afraid of burning Dean.

Dean was afraid of flying. He appreciated air for breathing, for rushing through the rolled-down windows, for taking away the smells of the hunt so no one would eye him and cover their noses when he stepped onto the sidewalk or sat in a booth. He didn't like the idea of flying, of betraying perfectly good ground like that, lifting up and away with no means of support, no way out, _trapped trapped can't escape._ He dreams of falling, dreams of tilting backwards off a roof and Sammy reaching for him, always too late, always there and never looking away, and his heart wrenches into his throat and the air rushes past and fills his ears and he's never sure if the reason he doesn't wake screaming is because he can't hear it or he can't make the noise.

The worst part was that Sammy would see it when he stopped falling.

John was afraid of the ocean. Tear-sharp tang, the grief of a hundred million souls pressed together tangibly, going on forever and ever amen. He heard about shipwrecks, another dozen lives eaten and another dozen families left to add to the beast that killed them. He'd look at his boys then and ruffle Sammy's hair, smile brittle and hollow at Dean, and wondered if that's what he's doing to them. Wondered what his inevitable death will do to them. Wondered if they'll drown. He didn't think so; they're good boys, and if nothing else, Dean will look after his brother. He had them both baptized properly, told them _Hold your breath, Dean, take it like a fall and don't breathe any water, it'll only be a few seconds_ and they had both come up laughing, giddy with free-fall. He couldn't stop shaking, held them close after and told him how proud he was, and only Father Jim understood and looked at him with an old, old pain. It only took a thimbleful of water to drown; you could do it on dry land. You could drown in tears, if you were sad enough.

He was just afraid for his boys, is what it came down to. Fathers were meant to die before their sons.

Jess was afraid of being buried alive. She'd think of it now and then, around Halloween or when the news came on with another tragedy, start to shudder and shake at the thought of all that earth pressing down, hard, one hundred twenty five pounds per cubic foot, slow and inevitable and merciless, tectonic shift closing over her skull and closing out the air, so dark and black there'd be no way to know when she finally died. Their first Halloween, she had to tell Sam when he found her in the kitchen staring blankly at the flowerpots, a knife in one hand. He brought her to the computer and made her look up the burial process, talked her through embalming, told her _even if you weren't dead, after what they put in you, you are_ and it was somehow a relief.

She wanted to be cremated anyway, just to be sure.


End file.
